Enlarge imageBy Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA (Reuters) - Hamas vowed revenge against Israel on Saturday after seven of its gunmen were killed in an upsurge of violence that has brought a truce close to collapse a month before Israel’s planned pullout from the Gaza Strip.
"Revenge, revenge," shouted thousands of mourners in Gaza at the funerals of four of the gunmen killed on Friday in missile strikes launched after a barrage of Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel which killed one woman.
"When Palestinian blood is shed, there is no protection for Zionist blood," said Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah.
The flare-up of violence, which began on Tuesday when a Palestinian suicide bomber killed five Israelis in the town of Netanya, has undermined a truce declared by Israel and the Palestinian Authority in February.
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It has also raised the prospect of a disruption to Israel’s planned evacuation of 9,000 settlers from all 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank next month which had stirred new hopes of reviving Middle East peace.
Israel stepped up its air strikes on Friday night, pounding three workshops the army said were used by Hamas to produce weapons and officials vowed to keep targeting gunmen to prevent rocket attacks ahead of next month’s pullout from occupied Gaza.
Militants hit back hours later, firing two rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot near Gaza on Saturday. One rocket slammed into the courtyard of a house but nobody was hurt.
Palestinian officials said the Israeli missile strikes were unjustified and would upset a calm declared by militant groups in February.
"All of us should be committed to the calm," Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie told reporters in the West Bank.
Faced with a collapsing truce, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arranged an unscheduled visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories next week to "encourage both sides to take appropriate steps to restore order", a U.S. State Department spokesman said.
"They need to make (a) maximum effort ... both individually and working together, to ensure that this withdrawal is a successful withdrawal," said the spokesman.
SHARON VOWS TO STOP ROCKET ATTACKS
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the army would put a stop to rocket barrages by Gaza militants ahead of the pullout.
"The pullout can not commence under fire," Sharon told Channel 2 television in an interview on Friday night.
Israeli military officials have said in the past they would carry out wide-scale raids and possibly reoccupy Palestinian areas near the settlements due to be evacuated to prevent the withdrawal from taking place under fire.
Palestinian residents said dozens of Israeli tanks poured into Gaza on Friday as news reports quoted Israeli security sources as saying the Jewish state might raid militant strongholds in the coming days to stop the rocket launches.
The Israeli army also arrested 26 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants across the West Bank in one of the largest arrest operations since the ceasefire was declared.
Of the seven dead Hamas militants, one was killed by an Israeli missile in the West Bank on Friday. Troops shot his comrade dead after he escaped and fired at them. A third gunman later died of wounds in an Israeli hospital, the army said.
A second raid killed four gunmen in a car in Gaza, which Hamas officials said carried makeshift rockets.
A Palestinian youth also died from his wounds sustained during stone-throwing clashes that erupted near the site of the West Bank missile attack, Palestinian sources said.
Hamas, sworn to Israel’s destruction, has warned that the air strikes would "open the doors of hell" on Israel and said it was reconsidering its commitment to honouring the truce.
It has carried out a majority of the recent rocket and mortar attacks on Israeli towns and villages near Gaza and Jewish settlements over the past two days. The army said 30 rockets and 61 mortars have been fired in the past 48 hours.
